Mount Allison welcomes human rights advocate Sally Armstrong

Award-winning journalist to deliver the second talk in the President’s Speakers Series, Oct. 29

Award-winning journalist, author, and human rights advocate Sally Armstrong will be coming to Mount Allison University as part of the President’s Speakers Series celebrating the Year of Global Engagement.

SACKVILLE, N.B. — Award-winning journalist, author, and human rights advocate Sally Armstrong will be coming to Mount Allison University as part of the President’s Speakers Series celebrating the Year of Global Engagement.

Armstrong’s talk, which is also this year’s Davidson Lecture in Canadian Studies, is entitled The Malala Lesson — a Canadian Connection and will take place on Tuesday, October 29 at 7 p.m. in Crabtree Auditorium. Everyone is welcome to attend.

“We are so pleased to welcome Sally Armstrong to Mount Allison during the Year of Global Engagement on campus,” says Dr. Christl Verduyn, director of the University’s Centre for Canadian Studies and one of the event organizers. “Her work as an international journalist and in the field of human rights is inspiring and I know will provide our students, and community members, with ample opportunities for thought and reflection on many world issues.”

The Malala Lesson — a Canadian Connection will focus on Armstrong’s research and reports on Malala Yousafzai, a 15-year-old from the Swat Valley in Pakistan who defied the Taliban, went to school, and was shot. Malala’s story, and her fight for female education in Pakistan, went viral and continues to make international news headlines one year after the event. Yousafzai was recently nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Sally Armstrong has covered stories in zones of conflict all over the world. From Bosnia and Somalia to Rwanda and Afghanistan, her eyewitness reports have earned her the Amnesty International Media Award three times, as well as acclaim all over the world. In addition to her journalism, Armstrong is the author of several books, including 2013’s Ascent of Women: Our turn, our way – a remarkable story of world-wide change.

Armstrong is a former member of the International Women’s Commission at the UN and has received honorary degrees from several Canadian universities including Mount Allison in 2009.

The talk is co-sponsored by the Centre for Canadian Studies as its annual Edgar and Dorothy Davidson Lecture in Canadian Studies.

The Year of Global Engagement will see many events and initiatives at Mount Allison including public lectures by Armstrong; Dr. Richard Henizl, founder of the first North American chapter of Doctors Without Borders; and Jennifer Welsh, University of Oxford professor, co-director of the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict, and Canada Special Advisor to the UN Secretary General. Visit www.mta.ca/pss for more details and updates.